Metal Gear Solid "If You Could Only See (The Best Is Yet to Come)" 6:05

Just as Solid Snake infiltrated the roster of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Smash Month infiltrated Dwelling of Duels last December, finally giving duelists an opportunity to exploit the infamous Smash Bros. Loophole! Serial collaborator, ReMixer, and judge Emunator procured a spot on the podium and a bronze medal with a heartfelt send-up to the closing credits of Metal Gear Solid featuring Nemo Fairlight, sibling mo.oorgan, Bharat Raman, minusworld, and ZackParrish.

Emunator sent us the details after finding our Codec frequency on the back of the CD case:

"This was my entry for the December Dwelling of Duels competition, where it placed 3rd! My usual roster of performers were all snatched up by ZackParrish and his "One-Winged Angel" mega-collab, so I took this as an opportunity to work with some community members that I hadn't collaborated with yet, and it led to some incredibly rewarding encounters and some downright serendipitous moments where the stars aligned perfectly. I won't speak too much to the influences on this piece, other than to say it ended up as a mashup of The Bends-era Radiohead meets "Cornfield Chase" from Interstellar meets Nightwish. I'll focus more on the collaborators here, because, honestly? I think I was carried hard by everyone featured on this track. The amount of talent that ended up on here still blows my mind every time I listen to it.

First off, finding a vocalist that could handle this style was a tall order out of the gate. Requiring a wide vocal range and an ability to handle Gaelic lyrics, I assumed that this concept was dead in the water from the start, but I reached out to Nemo Fairlight on a whim and it turns out she was already planning to arrange this song herself, and was intimately familiar with the source material. What she delivered absolutely exceeded my expectations, even dropping viola parts to round out the arrangement. Nemo helped bring this song to life but also turned out to be a really wonderful new friend that I had the pleasure of getting to know while we were producing this piece! The vibes instantly clicked and made this experience all the richer for that.

By this point, many of you know that I'm not the only member of my family involved in video game remixing - my younger brother, mo.oorgan, has been involved in music longer than I have! However, up until now, we've never actually collaborated on a full song together. My love of the Metal Gear Solid franchise comes entirely from watching Morgan play through the game when we were kids, so this felt like a perfect moment to make that all come together, and the results made me question why this took so long to happen in the first place. Mo dropped a swath of percussion, guitar, and auxiliary synth parts onto my demo and I used every last bit of it - the assignment was definitely understood here. :) It was such a natural fit and helped me get much closer to my initial vision than I could have ever gotten on my own.

Bharat Raman got involved in an entirely different way. He was staying at my house working on a recording project with my roommate, and, while we were chatting, I found out that he was actually familiar with Metal Gear Solid as well, and he offered to break away from his project for half an hour to record some parts. To my surprise, he recorded all of the violin parts you hear in this song in about 20 minutes, without ever hearing my arrangement beforehand. He even knocked out the lead line from the MGS4 "Love Theme" in one take, without a metronome or backing track, in a single take simply on a whim. I built the entire section from 3:14 to 4:08 around his improvised recording because it was so beautiful. I can't even express how lucky I felt - what are the odds that such a brilliant violinist would happen to be staying at my house the weekend that I was writing this piece, and already have enough familiarity with Metal Gear Solid's soundtrack to be able to record this much material in literally 20 minutes? I felt like the luckiest producer on the planet in that moment.

Rounding out the collaborator list, minusworld is an artist I've had my eye on for a while, churning out endless DoD bangers month after month, but it was his Porcupine Tree-inspired Inscryption remix that made me know he was the right guy for the job, being able to handle both the Radiohead-inspired indie sections as well as the heavy metal breakdown at the end. I made the right call - minusworld delivered exactly what I needed on the bass and rhythm guits, and I had absolutely no trouble slotting it right into the mix - he was not only a true professional but also an incredibly nice guy, too!

And, of course, it's not a DoD entry if I don't get Zack in there somewhere. Since all of his usual spots were taken, I basically gave him carte blanche to add whatever he wanted to the track, so that ended up being the guitar solo leading into the final verse and the staccato strings in the intro. Zack is such a talented collaborator that can fit in literally anywhere and make the track better for it. This man will always have a spot on my tracks.

As for source usage, it's pretty much all over the track any time the vocals are present - I didn't stray far from "The Best Is Yet to Come" at all in terms of chord progression or structure, with the exception of the aforementioned 3:14 breakdown, which was based on the "Love Theme" from MGS4."

Excellent, Sna – er, Emunator and co! The live violin is a spectacular complement to Nemo's voice and the soundscape brushed up by this band of brothers. Fellow judge and constant collaborator Chimpazilla praised the performances while noting a cramped soundscape:

"This is an arrangement I have not heard yet, which is amazing but speaks to how productive [Emunator] has been lately. The arrangement and performances are stellar. The vocals are awesome, it's so great that this singer was available and able to handle this specific genre and do it with such skill. The guitar, bass, string and drum performances are all top notch.

The soundscape is packed very VERY full, as expected with this roster of performers. [...] It's a lovely emotive tune, full of feels and ear candy, and I totally see how it took 3rd in DoD that month. Let's go!"

Judge prophetik music was overheard through a concrete wall saying "the realization is really interesting, the arrangement's enough that it's not a cover, and the execution is, for the most part, really solid."

For the survivors of the Shadow Moses Incident, the best is yet to come, but for y'all right here at OCR, the best is right here. So what are you waiting for? Grab your infinite ammo-granting bandana and a cardboard box and sneak in!